Me. Welcome to the You Are Not So Smart Podcast.

Episode 5. Kurt Cobain once said that the only way he would wear a tie-died t-shirt would be if it were soaked in the blood of Jerry Garcia.

That's weird.

It's weirdly ironic because the things that Kurt Cobain wore instead of tie-died t-shirts became the uniform for counterculture in his era.

It became the grunge outfit.

And it was also shocking to me when I discovered that Cobain hated hippies.

I always thought that the grudge rockers were trying in some way to bring back that countercultural idea that hippies had presented.

But they weren't.

Cobain hated hippies. He called them hippie critts. In his mind they had

sold out and the idea of selling out was repugnant to him. Which is strange because this is a man who sold millions of records and it may have led to a suicide.

The horrible feeling he had looking upon himself and thinking, am I a sellout may have contributed to that.

So what is selling out? What does that phrase mean? Do you sell out when you vote for the wrong party or when you get an 8 to 5 job or when you start buying Saline Dion albums or when you genuinely enjoy reality television?

And what is the opposite of selling?

I guess in one sense it means that you are true to your sensibilities that say I am not mainstream. I am not a

person who purchases, listens to, enjoys things that come from the mainstream

and that I don't produce things that belong in the mainstream.

It's not just that though.

It's not just the idea that selling out is betraying your counterculture.

It's also the idea that if you're an artist and you start using your art to sell, say,

tied with bleach, then you've become a sell-out, that you are no longer allowed to walk amongst real artists who are in it for the sake of the art itself.

This is something that comedian Bill Hicks would harp on all the time.

Here's a clip of him going through that.

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